The Song of the Mockingbird

I've been on a Western streak for IF lately, and The Song of the Mockingbird is one of the more prominent entries in that genre. Arguably, it is responsible for kicking off the largest wave of Western works in the hobbyist era of IF -- fully a quarter of all titles listed under that genre in IFDB follow Mockingbird's publication in 2021, when it placed 3rd in IFComp and tied for second in that year's Miss Congeniality vote.

Consciously modeled after old-time serial adventures for the cinema, Mockingbird claims to be episode 12 in an ongoing series, and it makes significant reference to events from (non-existent) recent episodes that directly inform the plot arc embodied by this work. To summarize: the hero, "Boots" Taylor, has fallen in love with the beautiful performer Rosa, who has been abducted by the scurrilous Black Blade -- a local villain whose most recent dastardly plot the hero was not quite able to stop entirely -- and he means to free his love from the clutches of this evildoer.

The only complication is that Boots doesn't have his gun, which was stolen by members of Black Blade's gang the night before. Right off the bat this work eschews some of the most elemental tropes of the Western, in the process creating much potential for action in the medium dry goods puzzle-solving mode so familiar to parser IF. It's a clever setup, and it works really well when backed by author Mike Carletta's engaging prose.

After overcoming an initial ambush in an arroyo, the action moves to the abandoned ranch that the gang is using for its hideout. Carletta does an excellent job of conveying a fairly complex space here, one that features important three-dimensional elements. The hero (via the player) must use his wits to overcome the trio of remaining gunmen protecting Black Blade and the hostage Rosa, who is in the house at the center of the ranch, always tantalizingly near but out of reach across a no-man's land of open ground that offers no cover for the hero. This mid-game is on the whole extremely well done; my one quarrel with it is that a key item is "hidden in the scenery," i.e. only disclosed after the player chooses to >EXAMINE a particular item in the room description. (Spoiler - click to show)(It's the branding iron, found in the stables only after (Spoiler - click to show)>EXAMINE RAFTERS.)

A minor rant for the benefit of would-be authors: (Spoiler - click to show)Although this "search everything" style is a classic old school parser trope, it's really the weakest form of puzzle (if you care to dignify this type of obstacle with the name), since it forces the player to lawnmower everything in sight, usually with at least three verbs: >EXAMINE, >SEARCH and >LOOK UNDER. I don't generally have a problem with this type of activity when there is a payoff in cases where nothing is found, i.e. when the author uses the descriptions yielded by the activity to further exposition, mood, etc., or when it's an integral part of the scenario (e.g. a forensic investigation). (In such cases, the activity becomes interactive storytelling instead of just drudgery.) Otherwise, it's still mostly OK so long as the author has taken pains to cover every mentioned noun with corresponding objects. (I don't exactly like it, but I accept it as fair.) Far worse than either of those approaches is a spotty object implementation that doesn't cover all mentioned nouns but still expects you to be investigating them routinely. Parser errors (e.g. "You can't see any such thing."), even inventive replacement versions, are never entertainment when repeated with frequency. The point of a parser error is to train the player to not do that in this game, and an author penalizes the cooperative player when making the applicability of parser errors inconsistent. If you want to hide items, better to hide them "in plain sight," i.e. as part of some tableau of objects about which the PC reasonably might not perceive every detail at once. (Key word: "reasonably." Having to >EXAMINE a table or the like to see what's on it is ridiculous and thankfully does not occur in this game.) Failing that, some gentle prompting to direct player attention (e.g. in this case perhaps the rafters occasionally creaking in the wind) or eventual automatic disclosure (e.g. the PC "happening" to spot something after so many turns) is called for. An author never ruins any genuine puzzle by directing players' attention to the components they need to solve it.

Once entering the endgame, the plot is resolved in short order -- regrettably, too short of an order. The game hints so strongly about what the player should be doing that it might as well be pure cutscene. The larger problem with the climax is that it hinges on a twist revelation that the player can't meaningfully absorb, resulting in a wedge being driven between the player/PC identity so carefully nurtured to that point. It turns out that (Spoiler - click to show)Black Blade and Rosa are one and the same, and though this doesn't seem to matter to the protagonist (whose undying love for her is proclaimed but not explained) Rosa, apparently unable to live with her recent past, is about to (Spoiler - click to show)commit suicide by dynamite.

This climax could certainly work as drama, but as presented here it's just too rushed to appreciate; the result is a bad stumble at the end of what is otherwise a high quality production. Better preparation of the player's mindset would be the key here: As always, the measure of quality for a twist is how much it makes sense in retrospect given what the audience has been shown, i.e. how well it reorganizes prior perceptions, especially how it grants new significance to details that didn't quite fit the audience's operating assumptions before the reveal. Perhaps the device of (Spoiler - click to show)using each bad guy's dying words as a clue (as seems to be started with the death of Ace at the end of the opening scene) could be leveraged to better set up the intended unveiling. (Even better would be to have released some prior episodes, so that the player would be able to genuinely sympathize with the PC's viewpoint, but let's not get too ambitious with our idle wishes here.)

Ending aside, this was a very enjoyable game to play -- it took me two or three hours to complete since I was unwilling to use hints or a walkthrough (though I did end up needing one clue). That's a testament to the author's skill in crafting a fun and engaging puzzle-solving experience, and I can see why Mockingbird placed so highly in 2021's IFComp. It's certainly among the top few of IF Westerns and Western-adjacent games I've seen (alongside The Legend of Horse Girl, Like a Sky Full of Locusts, and Hoosegow), though I've tried only a small portion of Westerns listed on IFDB. I'd recommend The Song of the Mockingbird for the puzzles, if not the story, and I'd certainly tune in for another episode of the adventures of Boots Taylor.